Interesting addition: Throughout much of 1926 Tsvetaeva kept up and intense correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke and Boris Pasternak. The above poem was sent to Pasternak while Tsvetaeva was in exile and had moved from Prague to Paris thus increasing her distance from her homeland. She grew increasingly isolated amongst the other emigre community as she had praised the works of Mayakovsky which got her mistakenly branded as endorising the Soviet system which eventually led the editors of the important journal The Latest News to stop publishing her works which, via her literary earnings, had allowed her to support her family through her contributions.

Interesting additon: In the Autumn of 1933 Mandelstam composed an epigram about Stalin, which he performed at seven small gatherings in Moscow, which ends with the above lines. Mandelstam was arrested six months later but instead of being executed (by being shot) he was exiled to the Northern Urals. Why was this considering ‘executions’ are what [Stalin] loves best’? A cruel irony or possibly that this relative leniency was due to Stalin taking a personal interest in Mandelstam’s case and being concerned about his own place in Russian literary history? After Mandelstam’s attempted suicide the usual sentence was commuted to one of being banished from the largest cities in Russia. Mandelstam and his wife, Nadezhda, settled in Voronezh where he went on to write the three Voronezh Notebooks. In May 1938 he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in the Gulag. He died in a transit camp near Vladivostok on 27 December 1938.

Behind the devil there’s his horde, behind the thief there’s his band,

behind everyone there’s someone to understand

and support him – the assurance of a living wall

of thousands just like him should he stumble and fall;

the soldier has his comrades, the emperor has his throne,

but the jester has nothing but his hump to call his own.

And so: tired of holding to the knowledge that I’m quite

alone and that my destiny is always to fight

beneath the jeers of the fool and the philistine’s derision,

abandoned – by the world – with the world – in collision,

I blow with all my strength on my horn and send

its cry into the distance in search of a friend.

And this fire in my breast assures me I’m not all

alone, but that some Charlemagne will answer my call!

by Марина Ивановна Цветаева (Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva)

(March1921)

translated by Stephen Capus

Fun facts: This poem was a favourite of Varlam Shalamov, according to Irina Sirotinskaya (she was a close friend of his and the holder of his works’ publication rights). It’s very likely he may have referenced this work in his poem Roncesvalles.

Tsvetaeva is referencing the romanticised tale of the historical figure Roland‘s death as retold in the eleventh-century poem The Song of Roland, where he is equipped with the olifant (a signalling horn) and an unbreakable sword, enchanted by various Christian relics, named Durendal. The Song contains a highly romanticized account of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass and Roland’s death, setting the tone for later fantastical depiction of Charlemagne’s court.

Fun fact: Of course the opening line of this poem refers to Lord Byron. George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron ByronFRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known as Lord Byron, was a British nobleman, poet, peer, politician, and leading figure in the Romantic movement. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage as well as the short lyric poem “She Walks in Beauty”.

Lermontov compares himself to Byron as both endure exile – however Byron’s, unlike Lermontov’s, was by choice. Perhaps more interesting to note is that Byron exiled himself to escape his fame in Britain while, in contrast, Lermontov fears he will die before his verse is recognised. Both became infamous but their reaction to it was very different.

Comparing both you wonder how sincere Lermontov is in this comparison and his voiced concerns of his verse being left unknown considering his poem Death of the Poet, its final part written impromptu, in the course of several minutes, was spread around by Rayevsky and caused uproar. The last 16 lines of it, explicitly addressed to the inner circles at the court, all but accused the powerful “pillars” of Russian high-society of complicity in Pushkin’s death. The poem portrayed that society as a cabal of self-interested venomous wretches “huddling about the throne in a greedy throng”, “the hangmen who kill liberty, genius, and glory” about to suffer the apocalyptic judgment of God. The poem propelled Lermontov to an unprecedented level of fame. Zhukovsky hailed the “new powerful talent“; popular opinion greeted him as “Pushkin’s heir“. Hardly a man who is doomed to have his thoughts unheeded by the crowd.

Perhaps, in his favour, we might reflect he is confessing to being unable to endure his sudden fame caused by his controversial poem, as Byron had gleefully revelled in for his own works and indeed lifestyle, and is somewhat regretful and fearful it would only be for ‘Death of a Poet‘ he would be remembered and none of his other works. Of course we now know him as a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called “the poet of the Caucasus“, the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin’s death in 1837 and the greatest figure in Russian Romanticism. His influence on later Russian literature is still felt in modern times, not only through his poetry, but also through his prose, which founded the tradition of the Russian psychological novel.

Fun facts: He wrote this in 1830 and the irony hasn’t been lost on Russian people that less than a hundred years later Nikolai II would lose this throne and… well it’s hard not to immediately see Lermontov’s prophecy (though ‘prediction’ is the more direct translation of the Russian title) proved an all too accurate omen of events during the twentieth century during the Soviet era.